According to the director of the Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City, a number of Palestinian inmates in Israeli detention facilities passed away as a result of medical malpractice, abuse, interrogation, and lack of medication.
Mohammad Abu Salmiya, who was freed on Monday, said at a news conference that he and the other Palestinians who were freed had left behind Palestinian inmates in Israeli jails “who experience difficult conditions.”
He continued by saying that the Palestinian prisoners receive little nourishment and are tortured physically and psychologically.
“Gaza prisoners lost (on average) 25 kilograms (55 pounds) of their weights because of lack of food,” stated Dr. Abu Salmiya.
He added that by failing to give the Palestinian inmates the necessary medical care, Israeli physicians and nurses contributed to their abuse and punishment.
“The (Israeli) doctor there beat the detainees, the nurse beat the detainees,” stated Abu Salmiya.
His request was for the foreign organizations that care about prisoners’ rights “to visit the prisoners and view the hard conditions they are enduring inside the prisons.”
Following several military operations over the previous few months, Israel seized over 54 Palestinians, including doctors, from Al-Shifa Hospital and other medical facilities. On Monday, Israel freed Abu Salmiya and these individuals.
Following an Israeli attack on the hospital, Abu Salmiya and a number of medical staff members were detained on Nov. 23 while going from Gaza City to the southern part of the territory.
Israel has come under international criticism for its ongoing, ruthless assault on Gaza following an attack by the Palestinian organization Hamas on October 7, 2023, in defiance of a UN Security Council resolution calling for an immediate cease-fire.
According to local health authorities, since then, at least 37,900 Palestinians have died—mostly women and children—and another 87,000 more have been injured.
Large areas of Gaza are in ruins and there is a severe shortage of food, clean water, and medical supplies more than eight months into the Israeli-Gaza conflict.
The International Court of Justice, which accused Israel of genocide, recently ordered Israel to immediately cease its military operation in the southern city of Rafah, where more than a million Palestinians had sought safety from the conflict before it was attacked on May 6.